Dean Westwood, a Portland disability trainer and outreach specialist for Oregon Health & Science University, received low-income benefits while living in a luxury apartment on the Portland waterfront and owning a speedboat, according to court documents charging him with health care fraud, theft and income tax evasion in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Westwood pleaded not guilty in court this morning, and was booked. He did not immediately respond to a voicemail message left on his cell phone.

A state Department of Justice prosecutor specially assigned to the Multnomah County District Attorney's office charged Westwood, 48, in a secret indictment. It alleged that Westwood, while enrolled in Medicaid, and Trista Westwood, his Medicaid-paid home care provider and niece, submitted fraudulent vouchers for more than $81,000 for work that Trista Westwood did not do. Furthermore, that she shared her payment with Dean Westwood. The indictment also claims that Westwood lied about his eligibility to receive tens of thousands of dollars between 2011 and 2013, and Westwood failed to file Oregon tax returns despite significant earnings in 2009-11. Trista Westwood declined to comment when contacted by The Oregonian.

According to court documents, Westwood received payments under the low-income Medicaid program despite earning as much as $9,000 a month in "various prestigious positions in Portland, thus rendering him ineligible for the program." According to the documents, he also "traveled to see Oregon Ducks games, and frequented expensive hotels and restaurants," but continued to tell the state he was poor.

Surveillance video showed that Trista Westwood visited his apartment only four times in a five month period, and she admitted to an investigator that she had provided no care for Dean Westwood in the four year period, despite vouchers claiming otherwise, the court documents said.

According to an undated announcement on the OHSU website about Westwood's new post, "Dean believes that entitlement models perpetuate dependence and have not done any favors for people with disabilities, and in fact, have done more to harm the true self-determination of people these models purport to serve."

According to OHSU, Westwood started working at OHSU as a senior research assistant in 1996. He has held several positions since then, including director of its now-closed Center on Self-Determination. In Nov. 2012 he began his current job, as disability awareness trainer and community outreach specialist. His annual salary is $61,000.16.